


The Tell-Tale Heart

by decadent_mousse



Series: Zombie Summoning 101 [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Gore, M/M, Pre-Slash, Temporary Self-Mutilation (it makes sense in context)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 14:04:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2550209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decadent_mousse/pseuds/decadent_mousse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newt has problems, and being a zombie is probably the least of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tell-Tale Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [teki10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teki10/gifts).



> This is set in an AU me and [teki10](http://archiveofourown.org/users/teki10/pseuds/teki10) came up with. Basically it's sort of an urban fantasy setting where Hermann is a mage who tried to summon a really terrible and intimidating undead creature to protect him from some people who were harassing him and what he got was... Newt. Who is a zombie.
> 
> I wanted to get this done in time for Halloween, so I'm a bit late, oops!
> 
> I didn't tag with character death because Newt died decades ago and is more or less okay in the fic itself, but let me know if I should stick it on there, anyway! I wasn't 100% sure what the protocol was for dead-but-not-dead characters.

Newt had a problem.  From an outside perspective he probably had _several_ , but he didn’t really care all that much about being dead, or being a zombie.  After all these years of coming and going from the grave every time some necromancer wanted him to eat someone, he was pretty much used to it – hell, it even had it’s advantages, like detaching his hand and hiding it in the fridge right behind Hermann’s baby carrots.  

No, his problem was _Hermann_ , or at least, he was part of the problem.

It had started about a week ago.  

~

They’d both settled on the couch to watch a movie marathon together.  Hermann had brought a bowl of popcorn that he refused to let Newt eat.  Every time he reached for the bowl, his hand got slapped away.  

“Need I remind you of what happened last time?”

“Last time” had involved Newt eating an entire cake too fast for his half dead – okay, mostly dead – digestive system to handle.  He’d ended up having to clean out his intestines the old-fashioned way – by pulling them out out of his abdominal cavity and cleaning them out by hand with a drain snake.  It’d been like a year ago and Hermann _still_ wouldn’t let it go.

“Fine, fine!  Geez.”

They were about an hour into the next movie before Newt tried again.  The movie had Hermann’s full attention and he figured if he was quick and quiet enough he could sneak some popcorn and Hermann wouldn’t even notice.  It’d been a good idea in theory but zombies weren’t exactly known for being quick _or_ quiet, and even in life Newt hadn’t been the stealthiest of guys.  

The popcorn rustled loudly as his hand entered the bowl and Hermann’s head spun around so fast Newt half-expected it to do a full 360°.  

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Before Newt could protest, Hermann grabbed his hand and pulled it out of the bowl.  Newt let out a triumphant “aha!” as he successfully grabbed a handful of popcorn on the way out.  Hermann was also still holding onto his hand.  It was kind of nice, if he ignored the way he was glaring at him.

It made his insides flop around – literally.  Something fluttered in his chest and it was actually a little uncomfortable and probably would have taken his breath if he’d _had_ breath to take.

Hermann blinked and stared at his hand, a look of slowly dawning horror spreading across his face.  “Newton.”

“Yeah?”

“Where is your finger?”

Oh.  Sure enough, there was a gap where his ring finger should have been.  It must’ve fallen off when Hermann had jerked his hand out of the popcorn.  Oops?

“Newton,” Hermann seethed.  “Your _finger_ – your _decaying_ finger – is in the _bowl_.”

“You’re the one who grabbed my hand!”

“You’re the one who was trying to take the popcorn when I implicitly told you not to!”

At that point things got pretty heated pretty fast.  Hermann started yelling, then Newt started yelling, and by the end of the night he’d almost completely forgotten about _the thing_.  

Until the next day when it did it again.  And the entire week after that.

~

“Okay, that’s it.  I’ve had enough of this.”

Newt poked at a weaker area where his skin was thinner, then poked harder.  The skin split open and he reached up into his ribcage and pulled out the offending organ with a wet plop.  It laid very still in his hand for a moment before twitching a little.  It was pathetic, it couldn’t even pull off an actual beat it just sort of quivered uselessly.

“Look, buddy, I’ve had enough of this.  You can’t just sit around in my chest cavity for sixty years doing nothing then– then start doing _this_.  Like, you literally _can’t_ – it’s biologically impossible.  So what gives?”

His heart stuttered timidly.

“Either you stop, or I’ll stick you in a jar and hide you in a cupboard somewhere.”  

~

A few days went by, and it didn’t stop.  It never really _started_ either – for weeks now, it would just give Newt sudden fluttery feelings at random and after going decades without a pulse it was about as pleasant as being kicked in the chest repeatedly.  He hated it.

So he stayed true to his word and crammed it into an empty peanut butter jar and put it in the cupboard under the kitchen sink.  It thumped plaintively against the side of the jar when he laid it in there.  He ignored it and slammed the cupboard door shut.

His chest felt kind of empty, but if it meant not having weird zombie heart palpitations, he figured it was a decent trade-off.

~

“Newton, what’s in this jar under the sink?”

Newt felt his stomach plummet downward.  He got up and ran towards the kitchen.  “Wait, no, Hermann!”

Hermann was already twisting the lid off.  He immediately recoiled.  “This smells foul, what _is_ this?”  He grabbed a nearby pair of tongs and used them to fish Newt’s heart out of the thick, dark brownish green liquid it was floating around in.  

“Uh– umm.”

The other man raised an eyebrow at him, holding the heart in the air above the sink, where it dangled there lifelessly and dripped muck into the sink.  “Well?”

“It’s a funny story, actually.”

“I’m listening.”

“It’s my heart, and I uh, misplaced it.”

“You misplaced it.”

“That’s right.”

“How do you _misplace_ a vital organ?”

“Well,” Newt laughed nervously, “it’s not _that_ vital.  I mean, it hasn’t worked in decades.”

As if on cue, the damn thing shuddered violently and Hermann let out a sharp, strangled noise of terror and dropped it.  It landed in the sink with a wet plop.

Hermann peered into the sink in horror.  “Why was it under the sink, of all places?”

“I figured you probably wouldn’t look there?”

“It didn’t occur to you that I might open a cupboard in the kitchen at some point?”

Okay, so in hindsight the kitchen probably hadn’t been the best hiding place, but every other spot he could think of, he could picture a thousand ways Hermann might end up stumbling across it.  He figured sticking it under the sink with all the kitchen cleaning supplies was a pretty safe bet.  Out of all the mages to end up saddled with, he’d ended up with a tidy one.  What were the odds?

“I don’t understand,” Hermann continued on.  “Why did you remove it in the first place?”

“Because– because it was doing _that_!”

“Right now it’s not doing much of anything.”

“Good!”

Hermann looked up from the sink and raised an eyebrow at him.  

“It’s _weird_ , Hermann!” Newt said with a frantic wave of his hand.  “Y’know what it is?   _Unnatural_.”

He gave Newt an incredulous look.  “Unnatural?  You are an animated _corpse_!”

“Exactly!  Zombies make _sense_ , from a magical standpoint.  Zombies?  Okay.  Internal organs suddenly acting alive again?!  Not okay, Hermann!”

“Technically speaking you are not a zombie in the usual–”

“Dude, you’re completely missing the point!”

Newt couldn’t see the inside of the sink from where he was standing, but he heard a frantic squishing noise.  

Hermann peered into the sink with a frown.  “It’s looking rather… distressed.  Will you please calm yourself before you give yourself a heart attack?”

He was starting to feel a bit hysterical.  This whole mess felt like a really bizarre nightmare.  “I can’t _have_ a heart attack!  I’m dead!”

“Apparently not quite as dead as either of us thought.  Clearly _something_ unexpected is happening.”

“Maybe something went wrong with your spell.”

Hermann gave him an irritated look.  “There was nothing wrong with the spell.  I performed it exactly as the book dictated.”  Irritation gave way to a thoughtful expression.  “Perhaps there was a typo.”

“Yeah, okay.  Sure.  A _typo_ gave me heart palpitations.”

“There has to be some logical explanation.  You said it yourself, zombies operate under certain magical principles.  There is something causing this, and therefore there must be something that can fix it.”

Newt kind of wanted to point out that him reading the book wrong was just as likely as a typo, but that’d just start a fight and he wasn’t really in the mood for it.  “You could stick down the garbage disposal.”

“Absolutely not!”

“It’s a solution!”

“Not one I’m willing to entertain!”

“It’s not _your_ heart, Hermann!”

“Be sensible about this!  We don’t know why this is happening.  For all you know, shredding your heart to pieces could kill–” Newt shot him a look.  “Could _disrupt_ the magic that keeps you animated, so we shouldn’t do anything rash until we have more information.”

That… made sense.  He’d been stressed out and miserable since this started, but he didn’t really want to go back to… whatever he was when he wasn’t up out of the ground.  He sighed.  “Fine.  Okay.” 

Hermann looked a lot more relieved than Newt felt about the whole thing.  He fished Newt’s heart – which was still quivering and almost looked semi-functional aside from the whole looking like rancid meat thing – and brought it over to him.  

“If you insist on keeping it outside of your body, could you at the very least find another place to store it until we’ve sorted this out?  I’d rather not have the entire kitchen reeking of decomposition.  Some of us have fully functional noses.”

“Yeah, alright.”

“We’ll sort this out,” Hermann said softly.  

He didn’t even look irritated anymore, and that somehow made it worse.  Newt could handle irritation.  A lot of times he _thrived_ on it – after years of drifting in a weird semi-conscious limbo in between summonings, any kind of attention was better than no attention.  Sympathy, he wasn’t one hundred percent sure what to do with.

Hermann handed him his heart, and Newt took it.


End file.
